Encounter Bay is on the south central coast of South Australia, some 100 kilometres (62 mi) south of Adelaide, South Australia. It is named after the encounter on 8 April 1802 between Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin, both of whom were charting the Australian coastline for their respective countries (Britain and France). The encounter between the scientists was peaceful, even though their countries were at war at the time.
Traditionally the land of the Ramindjeri clan of the Ngarrindjeri people, the bay is a wide curve of coastline extending from Newland Head along the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula and southeast to Cape Jaffa, a distance of 180 km. Settlements along the bay include Victor Harbor, Port Elliot, Middleton, Goolwa and Kingston SE. The Murray, Inman and Hindmarsh Rivers drain into the bay, and a long stretch of the shore south of the Murray Mouth borders the Coorong National Park.
Famous quotes containing the words encounter and/or bay:
“Ironic, isn’t it? The mind of man, wherever you encounter it—Earth or Mars—the highest attainments of human intellect, always diverted to self-destruction.”
—Kurt Neumann (1906–1958)
“Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)